“Sit down, ye muckle Highland stirk,” said M‘Harrigle, “and no mak a sough there about a boiled bagpipe. I’se warrant it’s a bit of gude eatin’; and we’ll see what can be made o’t when we hae pu’d awa thae whigmaleeries that are stickin’ round about it. Faith! I wadna gie a mouthfu’ o’ your bagpipe, M‘Glashan, for a’ the music that ever came out o’ its drone.”
“It’s quite a musical feast,” quoth the dominie; “only I fear we’ll be troubled wi’ wind in our stomachs after making a meal o’t. Sit down, M‘Glashan,” he continued, “for, as you were sayin’ before, a fu’ bag maks a loud drone.”
“Sit town! sit town! and see six Sassenach teevils tefour the bagpipes that hae pelanged to a M‘Glashan for twa hunder year! Oogh! won the competeetion too!”
The gaunt descendant of the Gael stood grinding his teeth, opening and clenching his big bony fists, as if he fancied himself about to grapple with some sturdy antagonist. His large blue eyes flaming from beneath the fringe of his knitted eyebrow, the big muscles encircling the corner of either eye, and curving round the mouth in deep hard folds, and the outward shelving upper-lip, puckered with a thousand wrinkles, were rendered more picturesque and fearful from being hedged round by an uncommon mass of bristly gray hair, two large portions of which hung on his broad, flat cheeks, like two large bunches of burned furse, while the whole rugged exterior was rendered still more imposing by the association of his favourite guttural interjection, “oogh!” His aspect lowered so grim and threatening, his “ooghs” became so loud and numerous, that all began to think it time to soothe the spirit of this Highland storm, lest its rising wrath should descend with deadly vengeance on those around him.
The landlord stepped out, and returned with M‘Glashan’s instrument. The mountaineer looked astonished, snatched it from him with eagerness, eyed it round and round, hugged and kissed the darling object of his affection, and poured into its capacious bag a stream of wind which immediately issued in a wild and stormy pibroch. Delighted with his own performance, “he hotched and blew with might and main,” mingling, every now and then, with his unearthly music, the half-recitative bass of a broad rumbling laugh, while M‘Harrigle’s rugged terrier, with his two fore paws upon the piper’s knees, spun out long and eerie howls of canine sympathy. It was in vain that we praised the savoury Scotch haggis, and recommended it to the palate of M‘Glashan. His heart, as well as his wind, was in his bagpipe, and he never once deigned to return an answer to our reiterated invitations; but having exhausted his scanty musical budget, the contents of which amounted to no more than a few Highland reels and strathspeys, he droned away in voluntaries so utterly horrible and dissonant, that Simon Gray, after swallowing a few morsels with as rueful contortions of visage as if every mouthful had been dipped in sand, ran out of the room holding his ears, and giving vent to a harsh German ach! which was powerfully expressive of his crucified sense of hearing. The piper piped on, and seemed to enjoy a sort of triumph over the wounded feelings of the departed dominie. None of the rest of the company followed his example, but each individual sat still with as much coolness and composure as if his ears had been hermetically sealed against the grunting, groaning, and yelling of this infernal musical-engine.
M‘Glashan’s tempestuous hostility at length ceased, and the dominie returned as the large punch-bowl was shedding its fragrant effluvia through the apartment, giving to every eye a livelier lustre, to every heart a warmer glow, and to every tongue a more joyous and voluble expression. No more than two or three glasses had circulated when Mr Singleheart and the dominie left the generous beverage to the enjoyment of the more profane and less responsible members of this assemblage of convivial spirits.
“He is an ill-hearted tyke who can’t both give and take a joke,” said Cleekum, as he burst abruptly into the apartment. “You would not certainly quarrel with an old friend, M‘Harrigle?”
“No, I’ll be hanged if I do,” was the reply of the cattle-dealer; “but Lord, man, if I had cloured Simon, I might hae run the kintra. Faith! if ye gang delvin’ about this gate for fun, ye’ll set your fit on a wasp’s byke some day. If I had but gotten my hands ower ye twa hours syne, there would hae been a job for the doctor. Let there be nae mair about it;—there’s a glass to ye.”
“The night drave on wi’ sangs and clatter.”
One merry story suggested another, till the potent spirit of the bowl covered some all over with slumber “as with a cloak,” laid others prostrate beneath the table, and to the maudlin eyes of the unconquered survivors presented every object as if of the dual number. The bustle and hurry of preparation in the kitchen had died away, orders for an additional supply of liquor were more tardily executed, and the kitchen-maid came in half undressed, holding a short gown together at the breast, rubbing her eyes, and staggering under the influence of a stolen nap at the fireside, from which she had been hastily and reluctantly roused. Cleekum, M‘Harrigle, M‘Glashan, and myself were the only individuals who had any pretentions to sobriety. The landlord had prudently retired to rest an hour before. Silence reigned in the whole house, except in one apartment, and silence would have put down her velvet footstep there also, but for the occasional roars of M‘Harrigle, who bellowed as if he had been holding conversational communion with his own nowt; and the engine-without-oil sort of noise that M‘Glashan made as he twanged, sputtered, and grunted his native tongue to M‘Harrigle, who was turning round to the piper every now and then, crying “D——n your Gaelic, you’ve spewed enough o’t the night; put a bung in your throat, you beast!”